what happens after you overshare?

The worst feeling in the entire world is when you say something out loud and instantly wish you could take it back. When brash words slip out of your tongue, or sensitivity takes over and refuses to stop itself in time to prevent the perceived threat.

At that precise moment, you are in the middle of something violent— dizzying, hot, itchy, loud.

You feel exposed. Like an open-casket funeral for a death no one prepared for, where every goodbye feels impossible to alter.

Sooner rather than later, the regret arrives, and these days I sit with mine more than I care to admit. I hold it close and convince myself it is something that can be tamed, even when I recognise its false promises. The softness remains close but far away from my abode. All I can tend to is the violence, and it moves through me like a dull blade.

I regret many things I have done, but mostly, I regret the things I said.

The sentences return at night with absurd clarity. Often, very often, I replay conversations, and the words stop sounding like language but begin to resemble slander against me.

I regret the days I said I understood. I am ashamed of the words I believed would create comfort, but they didn’t; they never did. Instead, they led everything downward, a cascade of strained emotions, each one begging to rewind time.

You feel so much in this life. But you feel a glimmer of hope and comfort, and you say everything. You memorise the serenity, and you confide in the things that matter. You confess because you want to be held gently. You want to be listened to, so you surrender your darkest secrets. You want solace, so you allow yourself intimacy, believing everything will somehow be alright.

Some people speak because silence hurts them more, and you are one of them. But your desire to breach silence doesn’t stop you from tossing and turning.

You regret every sentence. You begin to detest language for reducing your emotions into something smaller than what they truly are. You touch the air around you and realise its emptiness resembles your emotional state.

Some thoughts sound safer in the head. And some thoughts are only meant for those deserving of it. For some people, oversharing will never even be a choice—only time, and the quiet disbelief that your words might one day be used against you.

And, despite how desperately you hope time will numb the regret, you eventually realise that as long as you are alive, regret will always exist beside you because you have shared too much, and you promise you will stop this time.

But tomorrow will come, and you will probably speak too honestly again.